Zoom with your legs

The Wicked tooth peak Maljovitca area in Central Rila mountain.Western Rila mountain. Seven Lakes area. The new two chair lift to Rila Lakes chalet.Seven Lakes area the Lake hill. Small pyramids made of flat stones which tourists make to commemorate their visits here.Central Rila mountain. One of Maljovitca lakes and the path towards the peak. Six of the Seven Rila lakes and lakes hill.The crystal clear water of an alpine lake and tourists reflections on its surface.Sunflower fields.

This is going to be my last post about Kickstarter. I submitted an appeal and hoped they will change their first decision. Well, here is what I got :

Hi there Nickolay,

Thanks for taking the time to write to us again. We took a look at the project after your message, however the project you submitted does not meet our Project Guidelines (http://www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines) and it can no longer be submitted to Kickstarter.

Kickstarter projects should be focused around a singular, creative goal, rather than selling a service.

We wish you the best as you continue to pursue this endeavor, and we hope you continue to be part of the Kickstarter community.

—— Please do not reply to this email, as it does not receive incoming mail.

What a nonsense. There are so many other projects that I see that do exactly that - selling services. I don't know what exactly they don't like in the project, but since they don't explain why, I am not going to spend more time on this issue.

I am sharing this, so you be aware that Kickstarter is mostly waste of time, unless you have something that is guaranteed to sell.

Today I received an e-mail from Kickstarter and they informed me that my project is no good for them. Here is their e-mail:

Thanks for writing in and sharing your idea. With Kickstarter, it's important to be able to communicate past experience, visual examples of your work, and a comprehensive plan to complete your project within a reasonably certain time-frame -- projects at the very beginning stages are less successful because they are not able to do this.

Something like this sounds exciting, but is not in an ideal position to benefit from our platform.

Best, Nicole

If you feel that your project meets the Kickstarter Project Guidelines, you can submit an appeal for reconsideration:...................

They say I can appeal, but that is not going to help. I tried to get 3 other projects on Kickstarter and they were all declined. I guess Kickstarter is not a good place for me and my projects.

I feel they are moving away from the initial goal to support new projects that need help from the community to be started. Kickstarter becomes more like a store to pre-sell stuff and do cheap marketing. Not whining, just stating the obvious. I am sure you are thinking that I'd sound completely different if they were to accept my project. You might be right :).

If you are interested, here is the link to my (never to be seen) Kickstarter page:

Before submitting it, I aksed few friends to give their feedback and they were consistent that my video was too long. I removed a whole minute from it. Now it is about 3 minutes and in it I try to cover only the important points.

Because of the delay, I had to change the time for the group to be in July. This will give us enogh time to run the Kickstarter campaign and work with the travel agency to book the hotels, also rent a mini-bus and so on. I was surprised to learn that Amazon keeps the funds for 14 days, if the Kickstarter projects succeeds...

I will post the video here, after I receive the note from Kickstarter about the project. Let's see it they approve it.

It took a while to create the Kickstarter project. I am down to creating the introduction video. I also managed to get rates for hotels, mountain guides and for the photographer. It turns out it is more than I expected, but this shouldn't stop me from posting this on Kickstarter. I should let Kickstarters decide if the idea is worth to be supported and is good or not.

The photographer I am looking for needs to have experience, speak good English and be familiar with taking pictures in different light conditions. He/she needs to have experience taking landscape pictures and portraits, which is kind of a challenge.

The project is almost ready. Once I create the video (never done a video before), I will submit it to Kickstarter and hope for them to accept it and publish it.

Organizing the photowalks takes a lot of time and energy. We have to negotiate rates and make reservations in hotels and chalets. We also need to work within the schedule limitations of our guides and photographers.

In addition to this, we are not sure people will show enough interest in this new endeavor. We are just starting up and it is going to be a challenge to fill in all the spots for the first few groups.

This project is all about getting creative people together and explore interesting possibilities. Sounds like a good fit for a Kickstarter project!

If we go on Kickstarter, the project will be seen by many people (we hope), they will be able to get their questions answered and get to know us better (always a good think). Also, it will help us create the groups and this will be a real advantage when it comes to making reservations and all arrangements for each photowalk. It will also help fellow photo-enthusiasts to plan their time, so they can take part of something new and exciting.

In other words - a Kickstarter project will help a lot with our planning, getting the word about this project out there and help us introduce ourselves. For people that are interested in joining us for photowalks in Bulgaria it will give them the opportunity to get more familiar with the project, make their plans for the summer ahead of time and prepare for the photowalks.

I added short description of the places where the photowalks will happen. The goal is to cover as many interesting places as possible in the 5 days scheduled for the photowalks.

We aim to go the first day in Vitosha Mountain. It is the mountain that is just outside Sofia and is easily accessible. This photowalk will be an easy one just to warm us up and still be able to take interesting pictures. Most likely we will go to see the 'moreni' - oval granite stones in river valleys. Quite a sight!

Next we will go to a small town in the Pirin Mountains. It is a famous winter ski resort, but we are going there with a different purpose - to explore the sights, enjoy the unique culture (that area even speaks its own dialect, that is so different than Bulgarian that a native Bulgaria will ask for translation!), extremely interesting architecture and of course - amazing wild nature and sights.

After Bansko we should be all adapted to high altitudes and 2-4 hours hikes, which will make us ready to go to Malyovitsa. It is a Rila Mountains peak that presents extremely nice views and opportunities for panorama pictures. Get ready to use your stitching software of camera capabilities.

Depending on the weather we will go to The Seven Rila Lakes. This is supposed to be the most impressive and inspiring place during the the whole photowalk endeavor.

It is a good idea to look into HDR and how to make nice HDR photos with your camera. The mountains offer amazing opportunities for HDR and panoramic images, so be prepared!

I have been thinking to organize photo walks for some time now. I would say I am just starting to get serious about digital photography and I am looking for interesting and effective ways to learn how to improve my skills. In my opinion, learning by example is the best way to go about it.

So, I presented my idea to a few friends, they liked it and agreed to help me realize it. One of these friends (Ivan) has many years of hiking experience. He has done this professionally and just for fun. He will be our guide during these photo walks - he knows all magical places in the mountains worth taking pictures of.

This website will be used to facilitate my efforts to make this project happen. I just started, it is still under construction, as you can see.

I chose BlogEngine.net as blogging and website platform. I will be customizing and changing it to adjust it to my needs.